A mountain of documents are associated with vehicles: registration documents, insurance cards, cab cards, disabled placards, tags (or stickers), state or county inspection certification, emissions documentation, license plates, trip permits, cargo manifests, and title documents, to name but a few.
Counterfeiters and forgers busy themselves by altering or faking such documents. It is becoming difficult to verify the authenticity of such documents and cumbersome to find additional information related to them.
One solution is to embed steganographic auxiliary data in vehicle-related documents to help prevent or detect counterfeiting. The data can be decoded to determine whether the object is authentic. The auxiliary data may provide a link to a network resource, such as a web site or data repository.
One form of steganography is digital watermarking. Digital watermarking systems typically have two primary components: an encoder that embeds the watermark in a host media signal, and a decoder (or reader) that detects and reads the embedded watermark from a signal suspected of containing a watermark. The encoder can embed a watermark by altering the host media signal. The decoding component analyzes a suspect signal to detect whether a watermark is present. In applications where the watermark encodes information, the decoder extracts this information from the detected watermark. Data can be communicated to a decoder, e.g., from an optical sensor (e.g., a web camera, digital camera, scanner, etc.).
A watermark can have multiple components, each having different attributes. To name a few, these attributes include function, signal intensity, transform domain of watermark definition (e.g., temporal, spatial, frequency, etc.), location or orientation in host signal, redundancy, level of security (e.g., encrypted or scrambled), etc. The components of the watermark may perform the same or different functions. For example, one component may carry a message, while another component may serve to identify the location or orientation of the watermark. Moreover, different messages may be encoded in different temporal or spatial portions of the host signal, such as different locations in an image or different time frames of audio or video. In some cases, the components are provided through separate watermarks.
The physical manifestation of watermarked information most commonly takes the form of altered signal values, such as slightly changed pixel values, picture luminance, picture colors, DCT (“Discrete Cosine Transform”) coefficients, instantaneous audio amplitudes, etc. However, a watermark can also be manifested in other ways, such as changes in the surface microtopology of a medium, localized chemical changes (e.g. in photographic emulsions), localized variations in optical density, localized changes in luminescence, etc. The surface texture of an object may be altered to create a watermark pattern. This may be accomplished by manufacturing an object in a manner that creates a textured surface or by applying material to the surface (e.g., an invisible film or ink) in a subsequent process. Watermarks can also be optically implemented in holograms or embedded in conventional paper watermarks.
If a document includes an image, photograph, graphic, line art or artwork, these features may be subtly altered to embed a watermark.
Some techniques for embedding and detecting watermarks in media signals are detailed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,122,403, 6,449,377 and 6,614,914, and PCT patent application PCT/US02/20832 (published as WO 03/005291), which are each herein incorporated by reference.
In the following disclosure it should be understood that references to watermarking and steganographic data hiding encompass not only the assignee's technology, but can likewise be practiced with other steganographic technologies as well.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a license plate for attachment to a motor vehicle is provided. The license plate includes auxiliary data steganographically embedded therein.
Another aspect of the present invention provides a method of providing authenticating information for a property title document. The method includes steps of: i) receiving a first digital signature that is associated with a seller of property; ii) receiving a second digital signature that is associated with a buyer of the property; iii) using the first digital signature and the second digital signature to provide a digital watermark payload, the payload comprising the authenticating information; and iv) steganographically embedding the digital watermark payload in the property title document.
Yet another aspect of the present invention is a method to authenticate documentation associated with a motor vehicle. The documentation includes plural-bit auxiliary data steganographically embedded therein. The auxiliary data includes at least an identifier. The method includes: receiving optically captured image data that corresponds to the documentation; analyzing the image data to obtain the identifier, wherein the identifier includes or links to information to uniquely identify the motor vehicle; and providing a signal in response to the identifier being successfully obtained.
Still another aspect of the present invention is a method to facilitate transfer of a motor vehicle from a seller to a buyer. The method includes steps of: i) receiving into a first data record information associated with the motor vehicle or the seller of the motor vehicle; ii) providing the buyer of the motor vehicle with a digitally watermarked object, the digital watermark comprising an identifier; iii) associating the identifier with a second data record, the second data record including information associated with the buyer of the motor vehicle; iv) associating the first data record with the second data record; and v) upon presentment of the digitally watermarked object, optically capturing scan data representing the digitally watermarked object, and analyzing the scan data to obtain the identifier, said method further comprising accessing at least the second data record via the identifier.
The foregoing and other features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will be even more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.